A steam locomotive from 1993 broke my yarn test

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167 points jgrahamc | 1 comments | 02 Apr 25 13:10 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source

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GTP ◴[02 Apr 25 13:53 UTC] No.43556706[source]▶

Just from the title, I suspected that Steam Locomotive had something to do with it. So I quickly glanced through the article up to the point where the locomotive shows up. Sometimes there's the idea hanging in my mind to make a version called Slow Locomotive, where the train slows down every time you press ctrl-c.

replies(1): >>43557047 #

dullcrisp ◴[02 Apr 25 14:24 UTC] No.43557047[source]▶

>>43556706 #

If you press ^Z does it stop entirely?

And do these sorts of ideas ever get you into trouble?

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1. throwanem ◴[02 Apr 25 15:50 UTC] No.43558052[source]▶

>>43557047 #

I once reimplemented in Perl Nethack's logic for phase-of-moon and Friday 13th computation and notification, and added the resulting cute little script to the root .profile on our consulting firm's main web hosting boxes.

I didn't get fired when my boss found it by surprise a couple months (and lunar cycles) later, but I did learn a valuable lesson about how one may wisely limit one's exercise of whimsy.

Google took a few years more to achieve the same discovery, as I recall, but presumably this has to do with pedagogical methods involving not as many ex-sergeants.

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